Bitcoin traded as an AI stock on Thursday

On Thursday Meta told investors it had signed leases and contracts worth about $825 billion to build out its AI business, and its shares fell 7%. CoreWeave, which rents out the computers that run AI models, fell by more.

The Nasdaq fell 2.6%. Bitcoin fell 3.6% over the same day and is $81,181 this morning, its lowest reading in a month.

Most of the shares in the S&P 500 closed higher on Thursday. The index fell because the AI names fell. The people selling those shares bought government bonds with the money, and the ten-year Treasury yield had its biggest one-day fall since the day Silicon Valley Bank failed in March 2023, to just under 5%.

Oil went the other way. Brent crude rose 4% to about $113 a barrel after an attack on a Saudi airport that Saudi Arabia blamed on Iran-backed Houthis. Bond yields usually rise when oil jumps like that. On Thursday they fell anyway, which tells you the bond buyers were looking for somewhere safe.

The bitcoin funds had been buying this week. On Wednesday they took in $524.8 million, their second big day of the week, and the week's total stood above $1 billion before Thursday opened. The figure for Thursday's session was not in our record when we wrote this.

So the week had two stories. The funds bought bitcoin on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and then the AI shares fell and bitcoin fell with them, while most other shares rose and bonds were bought. Was Thursday bitcoin's bad day, or the AI shares' bad day with bitcoin along for it? And does one day like it say anything about the next week?

We keep a daily record of bitcoin's price back to June 2025. Bitcoin has fallen 3% or more in a day roughly thirty times in it. A week after those falls it was higher about as often as it was lower, and the same is true ten days after. A fall of this size, on its own, tells you nothing about the week ahead.

What separated the bad days from the bad months was what happened in the five days after.